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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nShe\u2019s currently on tour, which she\u2019s turned into a full-blown road trip\u2014renting a van and committing to all the requisite rituals of extended life on the road. When we talk, she\u2019s en route to Detroit for the first of two nights of events with our mutual pal\u2014and my biological mother\u2014Samantha Irby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this is\u2014by now, famously\u2014not West\u2019s first road trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her new book, Adult Braces<\/em><\/a>, is about an even bigger journey: the one she takes to reclaim herself. After the public triumph of Shrill<\/em><\/a>, she found herself in private crisis\u2014her marriage on shaky ground, depression creeping in, and a sense that the “Lindy\u201d everyone else saw didn\u2019t match the one she actually was. Over the course of the book, West takes a road trip through kitschy tourist destinations (and traps), awe-inspiring natural wonders, and unexpected campground epiphanies. Along the way, she experiments with hiking, journaling, and venturing far beyond her comfort zone. All of this happens while she reckons with what love, fidelity, and partnership mean to her\u2014including her path toward polyamory, which no one is talking about online at all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n What emerges is a memoir that is equal parts laugh-out-loud and deeply revealing: a story of a woman learning to be the navigator of her own life, even when the road\u2014and the heart\u2014is messy, absurd, and full of unexpected detours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greg Mania<\/strong>: Lindy, the book is out. You\u2019ve arrived. Again. How does this particular arrival feel?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lindy West<\/strong>: It feels surreal! I worked on this for so long and now it\u2019s out there and it\u2019s not mine anymore! Readers get to do with it what they will, which is always scary and exhilarating and really, really rewarding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: So much of this book is about reclaiming agency\u2014does letting it go out into the world feel like another version of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: Kind of. I thought it would be. I expected it to feel easier, more therapeutic, to release it into the world. But I\u2019ve actually found myself feeling a lot more protective and defensive, which I think is a response to the backlash. There\u2019s this dynamic that comes up in conversations like this: I wrote something, and then a lot of people had a mixed bag of takes\u2014some of them really cruel and, frankly, offensive\u2014and many of those people didn\u2019t even read the book. Then, if I say, “Hey, that sucks that you did or said that,\u201d there\u2019s this second wave of people who respond with, “Well, you wrote a memoir and put it out there.\u201d It\u2019s so strange that people think that\u2019s some kind of ultimate gotcha. I can still have an opinion about how people are talking about me. <\/strong>What\u2019s been hard is that so many of those takes strip me of my agency. So it\u2019s definitely been a challenge to stay grounded in the agency I do have and just let it be. I\u2019m trying\u2014and I\u2019m mostly succeeding\u2014because I do believe in myself and in my own strength and autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: You became such a public symbol of confidence and self-possession after Shrill<\/em>, but Adult Braces<\/em> starts from a much more vulnerable place. When did you first realize that the “Lindy everyone else saw\u201d and the Lindy you were actually living with had drifted apart?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I can still have an opinion about how people are talking about me.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: Probably in 2020, when we were all trapped at home with our thoughts. I started going to therapy in 2019 but I was still in crisis mode at that point, because so many different parts of my life were broken. It wasn\u2019t until lockdown that I had a chance to sit with what I\u2019d learned and begin to try little experiments to feel better and more whole. Things like hiking, journaling, meditating, gardening, building a new routine, all the clich\u00e9 stuff we were doing. Turns out, that stuff really works!<\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: When you say “that stuff really works,\u201d what do you think it was actually doing for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: I think it was getting me out of my head\u2014and out of my phone and my computer\u2014and back into my body. Not to sound like someone who drones on about how phones are bad, because I love my phone; it\u2019s a dear friend of mine. But there\u2019s this vortex\u2014honestly, like the one I\u2019m in right now\u2014where what\u2019s happening on your phone feels like it\u2019s just sucking you in. Being outside, using my body, getting dirty, feeling aches and pains, writing on paper\u2014just being a person in the physical world\u2014feels like such potent medicine for getting out of my head, which can sometimes be a scary place to be. There are certain things that just ground you in who you really are. It sounds like a clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s true\u2014and it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: Did it ever feel like you\u2019d lost yourself\u2014or like you\u2019d outgrown a version of yourself that used to fit?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: I definitely lost myself, but I don\u2019t feel like I outgrew an old version of me. Maybe I outgrew an old version of my life. But it\u2019s more like I\u2019d never bothered to stop and think about what I wanted my life to look like. And that\u2019s because I didn\u2019t know who I was; I wasn\u2019t confident, and I didn\u2019t necessarily think I deserved to choose my own life. I was like, “You guys pick first, I\u2019ll take whatever falls out of the truck!\u201d I always looked to other people to tell me who I was. I still do it. In some ways releasing a book and waiting for the response is a version of that, which I have to fight. Because I think at some point I realized that looking externally for validation or self-definition never works. You get trapped forever in the question, because the only person who can answer it is you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: Once you set out on the road trip, you started recording voice notes to yourself along the way. What did speaking your thoughts out loud\u2014in real time\u2014give you that silent reflection didn\u2019t?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I always looked to other people to tell me who I was. I still do it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: It made it much harder to do any posturing. Even in my journal, I sometimes find myself imagining someone else reading it and then I pull back or try to sound more sophisticated than I am. Recording the voice memos\u2014which I was fairly certain would never be heard again, even by me, because I\u2019m lazy and who wants to wade through 20 hours of rambling voice memos?\u2014while driving the van and navigating and looking at bison, I didn\u2019t have the motivation or the bandwidth to try and be cool. And I got such a special, unvarnished account of the trip as a result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: You write about interrogating your own patterns\u2014especially around codependency and your initial resistance to nonmonogamy. What surprised you most about the beliefs you realized you\u2019d be carrying into your marriage?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: I was really surprised to realize how much I relied on control to feel safe. Even that paradigm, which of course you learn in therapy, of feeling safe versus unsafe emotionally\u2014none of that had ever occurred to me before. I just took it for granted, and truly never even identified that I was doing this, that part of a relationship is trying to push or guilt or condition your partner into being the person you want. I think that\u2019s so normalized. Obviously you have to have boundaries and conversations about how you expect to be treated, but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m talking about. I\u2019m talking about, like, feeling panicked because your partner hasn\u2019t texted you back in an hour so you call them crying until they pick up, even though you know they\u2019re just out living their own life with their own friends, hobbies, whatever. That\u2019s an attempt to clamp down on that person\u2019s freedom and make them feel bad for having a real life outside of you. It also takes you away from yourself. It\u2019s a scary place to live, yet we\u2019re taught that it\u2019s what safety looks like. I\u2019ve never been more anxious and scared than when I was codependent. I have been surprised to learn how much I value freedom, both for me and for my partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: When those old instincts still show up\u2014that panic, that urge to reach for control\u2014how do you respond to them now?<\/strong> GM<\/strong>: You\u2019ve talked about feeling a responsibility to others as a public figure\u2014that changing your body might feel like a betrayal. How did you come to the place where using your body for yourself became the key to moving forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was really surprised to realize how much I relied on control to feel safe.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n LW<\/strong>: It helped, again, that I wasn\u2019t working much during Covid. Just home alone with my body. And almost out of boredom I started to wonder, what if I . . . went kayaking? Went on a real hike? Planted a garden and shoveled manure all day? All kinds of things that I\u2019d been afraid to try because I didn\u2019t know if my body would fail me or embarrass me. But then all of a sudden it was lockdown and no one was watching me, and I was in therapy and my body and brain were becoming more and more integrated, rather than two faraway strangers. And it became so obvious\u2014sitting perfectly still forever, out of fear, doesn\u2019t do me any good. And if it isn\u2019t good for me, why would it be good for readers who are looking to me for guidance or commonality or inspiration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n GM<\/strong>: Since finishing this book, are there any conclusions you arrived at while writing that you still find yourself wrestling with?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/strong>LW<\/strong>: It\u2019s still a struggle, for sure. But what\u2019s helpful now is that I know what these patterns are, and I know what they look like. I used to trust myself completely as a reliable narrator\u2014I trusted the voice in my head. Now, when those feelings start to come up, I write them down. It\u2019s so much easier to look at them and see what\u2019s actually going on once they\u2019re outside of my head. Even now, during this tour and with the backlash happening, I can see the signs. There are things in the book where I list the stages of my deterioration\u2014and I notice them. Like, even yesterday, I realized I hadn\u2019t showered, and it was like, okay, I know what this is. It becomes easier when I just push past that initial resistance. All I really have to do is push through a hard moment\u2014a barrier\u2014not solve some huge mystery. The obstacle has already been identified, and the treatment is known. I\u2019m never going to be perfect at it, and I don\u2019t think that should be the goal. The goal isn\u2019t to feel great all the time or for nothing to ever be wrong\u2014the goal is to try to take care of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n